Barack Obama will unveil several new technology policy initiatives today during a visit to Silicon Valley, including a proposal for a national technology czar called a "chief technology officer," VentureBeat has learned.

The Democratic presidential candidate comes to California seeking to bolster his standings here, where he currently trails front-runner Hillary Clinton in most opinion polls.

Obama's tech agenda, including the CTO proposal, should play well with the employees at Google, the Mountain View search engine, where Obama will visit this afternoon, among other stops.

The CTO's mandate under the plan is significantly different from the cybersecurity czar position created by the Bush administration. The CTO's main responsibility would be to ensure the government holds open meetings and records live Webcasts of those meetings, and that blogging software, wikis (Web site pages where multiple people can edit a document at the same time) and open comments be used to communicate policies with Americans.

Obama's technology plan covers everything from providing new subsidies for Internet broadband access to increasing permanent visas for skilled immigrants.

His campaign has long stressed the need for open government meetings and more transparency. But his plan reveals more specifics. He wants Cabinet officials, government executives and rule-making agencies to hold meetings open to the public and transmitted with a live feed. The mandate will be to ensure this happens, according to Obama's campaign managers, who spoke with VentureBeat.

Specifically, Obama wants the public to be able to comment on the White House Web site for five days before legislation is signed.

Several well-known local figures are expected to announce their support for Obama's plan, including two former FCC chairmen under President Clinton: Stanford University legal expert Larry Lessig and John Roos, chief executive of Palo Alto law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Roos, one of Obama's top fundraisers, said Silicon Valley start-ups will be encouraged by Obama's call this month for a clean technology venture capital fund backed by a whopping $50 billion in federal money over five years.

In the plan, Obama also calls for more aggressive government support of broadband access. Specifically, he says subsidies for phone carriers should be given only to those offering both regular phone service and Internet broadband to rural areas. To date, carriers offering merely phone service have been able to claim subsidies from the so-called Universal Service Fund, giving them little incentive to roll out out broadband.

Obama also calls for reviewing the decision by the Federal Communications Commission to open the wireless spectrum for competition. He thinks the FCC may not have gone far enough with its recent ruling, according to campaign managers who asked not to be named. He wants to conduct a multiyear review but is leaning toward pushing for the opening of some spectrum on the 700 MHz band so third parties can lease it on a wholesale basis.

This is to ensure that the winners of a pending auction for the spectrum - expected to be large phone carriers like Verizon - don't just sit on the spectrum and not use it. Some fear they may do that to block others from competing with them.

Obama's proposals are supported by Google, which is expected to bid on the wireless spectrum.

The candidate also is in favor of network neutrality, a policy that would prevent Internet service providers from charging companies like Google extra to ensure the speedy transfer of data over the Internet.